Up and running!

[Speyside Steve]

We are now up and running with our second property (Aspen Lodge established for a couple of years, Shalimar just had its first guests).

I would really appreciate any feedback on the website - is it clear and easy to navigate, would you want to come on holiday and book either or both of the houses if you were coming to Scotland? What would you change about the website (or houses!)?

www.speysideholidaycottages.co.uk

Thanks in advance!!

Steve

[CarolineH]

Hi Steve

I've had a quick look and I like the site - clean and professional.

Just a few hiccups that I found on browsing through:

On the Availability and Rates Page the links in the left hand menu work, however the highlighted links to each gite in the main text dont work - The page you requested no longer exists

Also a typo under bookings - the fourth bullet point - "before the start oy your holiday"

Hope this helps!

[enid]

I've had a quick look. The properties look great. I love your text especially your introduction - it's good to here how much you love your property and its location. Lots of photos too is a plus for me. Just one observation - the walls in Shalimar look a little bare and I would add some prints or paintings. Also I would dress the rooms in both properties a little more to get photos with even more mood - some flowers: dining table etc etc

Good luck with the new property.

[katz]

First thoughts:

- I'd probably put some text in your banner at the top - maybe Speyside Holiday Cottages? Looks like it is missing something to me.
- you don't mention anything on the first page about fishing, as soon as I said to my husband that I was looking at some cottages in Speyside he said that's a great fishing area - is this one of your target markets?
- on the first page, where you have the line "Click on the photo to go to the Aspen Lodge pages of the website." remove the link on the words "Aspen Lodge" or make it work - why have it there if it doesn't work? It is not consistent with the link above to your other property

That's it for now. I do like the clean look of the website, it is easy to find what you want and your cottages look lovely!

[Speyside Steve]

Thank you so much for taking the time to test the links and spot the typo. Should be sorted now.

I am not sure about text in the title, but have added it to see if I prefer it! It does mean that there is a reminder of the business name on every page. What do you think? Better/worse?

I agree about saying more about the fishing etc on offer higher up the front page. There is something about fishing in the Speyside/Cairngorms section lower down the page, but people may not read that far before going to check out the properties!

Good feedback about the walls. I agree they ARE a bit bare. We took the view that we would buy prints and paintings out of income/profit rather than up front (as we had a fairly chunky bill for the major furniture and at the time we only had one booking). As we now have some more bookings, we will be making it more homely before the summer!

Thanks again for the feedback. It has been really helpful.

[katz]

Ooh - I like the text in the title picture - it works with your general text them and as you say serves as a reminder on each page.

With regards to sourcing prints for your bare walls - do you use boot fairs? We have found some lovely pictures for as little as a £1 at boot fairs - absolutely nothing wrong with them, the owners simply don't want to have to take them back home. Much cheaper than buying them brand new!

Glad that you found the feedback useful

[Speyside Steve]

Great idea about car boot sales & fairs etc as a source for pictures.

Our problem so far has been time. Shalimar was our family home. We only had a gap of 1 month between us moving out of Shalimar, re-furnishing it and the first guests arriving, so were a bit stretched (not least because we were also getting our new house organised after the move - organising two houses at the same time was a bit hectic as you can imagine)!!

I think we pulled it off and can start to get some normality (whatever that is) back in our lives!!

Just need a few more bookings now ...

[CSE]

Steve
I quickly glanced at your website and it seems you have duplicate content.
I can see pages that start in http//website and the same page content, but starts in http://www.website. Do you know that the likes of Google do not like this and seems to punish your ranking for doing this? It is best to use your .htaccess file to redirect to one or the other and remove the files not required.
Explained below.
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bi ... swer=93633


Some external links are not correct: -404 Not Found
http://www.rothiemurchus.net/Pages/Acti ... chery.html
http://www.highlandactivities.co.uk/index.asp http://www.rothiemurchus.net/Pages/Acti ... shing.html
http://www.rothiemurchus.net/Pages/Acti ... oting.html

The following need changing as they are on redirects: – 301 Moved
http://www.cairngormmountain.co.uk/
http://newtonmoregolf.com/
http://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/l ... /index.asp
http://www.grantownonspey.com
http://www.goski.co.uk/resorts/scotland ... /index.htm

A number of page tiles are over the recommended 70 characters. (I too have to do something about this on my web site)
Quite a number of your web pages have a   in the description Meta Tag.
A few Key Word Meta Tags are stuffed to brimming. I.e. there are too many characters.
I would also look into a way of remaining the images to represent the subject.
The website seems to load and function well in the three browsers I have.

[tavi]

Hi Steve,

I, too, like the text in the banner shot... and it's a nice clear site.

A couple of thoughts:

On your home page there is nothing to tell me where in the world you are, except of course Speyside and Grantown(neither of which mean anything to an ignoramus like me).

I might have missed it but when I first looked at your site I literally didn't know where the houses were, so I went to your "directions" page but even then could only discover where you were but clicking on the map and zooming out.

Would it be an idea to include the words Scottish Highlands or something - in your text somewhere?(and would also help your site to get found when those words are used in searches?)


Again speaking as a potential guest coming from a different country, I would like to know what airports/major rail stations etc...are nearby.

Hope this is helpful.

[Speyside Steve]

Thanks for the new feedback. Fresh pairs of eyes make such a difference! Definitely guilty of assuming that viewers of the website would know what and where Speyside is. Easy to remedy, but a really useful point.

Lots to digest in casasantoestevo's post too! May be I should just rename the final tab on the menu to 'useless links'!!

Always a danger that websites change their addresses but it should be easy to fix them. Not sure about how to avoid the duplication of web content (http:\\www.speyside and http:\speyside).

Anyway, I am off to do some tweaking!! Thanks again for taking the time and trouble to look at the website and passing on your thoughts and observations.

Steve

[CSE]

Steve there is nothing one can do about changes to external sites except review them on a regular basis. I too have a few that should be changed. Just trying to find the time. Maybe I should stop writing on forums

To avoid duplication remove the files. But before you do can you let me know if you have assess to your .htaccess file? If you do not have one can you easily add one?

[Speyside Steve]

I use 1&1 MyWebsite to host my site. This is template based (so I don't actually write the code) which is simple for me to use but does mean I have restricted access to some of the code etc. I am thinking I need to contact them and ask them to point the website at one and delete the duplicates. Does this sound like the right idea?

[Speyside Steve]

A number of page tiles are over the recommended 70 characters. (I too have to do something about this on my web site)
Quite a number of your web pages have a   in the description Meta Tag.
A few Key Word Meta Tags are stuffed to brimming. I.e. there are too many characters.
I would also look into a way of remaining the images to represent the subject.

Page Tile - is this the length of the page name eg 'http://speysideholidaycottages.co.uk/av ... ilability/'? Is it recommended to keep these as short as possible and under 70 characters?

What is the impact of the &nbsp in the meta tag? I am not sure that I have consciously added this and it may be something to do with the way 1&1 works.

I will simplify some of the meta tags. I got excited when setting up the website and chucked as many words as I could in? Is there a recommended number per page?

With regard to the photos, do you mean the ones in the galleries or in the website in general? I have tried to give all the pictures subtitles which relate to the content.

Thanks again for your input! It is much appreciated!

[Harborfields]

page title -- that's the name of the page that appears in the header of the window, it is within <title></title> tags in the <head> portion of your page.

image names -- beyond subtitles, you might look at the actual names of the image files.

[Speyside Steve]

page title -- that's the name of the page that appears in the header of the window, it is within <title></title> tags in the <head> portion of your page.

image names -- beyond subtitles, you might look at the actual names of the image files.

Oops - thought page tile was something I hadn't heard of rather than a typo